January 18, 2015

Here's a downright peculiar album. It came from Fleetwood Records, in Revere, Massachusetts. But while Fleetwood seems to have specialized in Drum and Bugle Corps records, as well as a variety of sports related releases, this one is something different entirely.

Credited to "Nathan Webb at the Piano", and titled "The Songs of Christian America", it is nothing but a series of unidentified songs played as piano solos, for more than 25 minutes a side.

The back of the cover is blank, and the album label only repeats what is said on the cover, as well as a bit of label information. That information includes the phrase "PARDON ME, but... CHRISTIAN PATRIOTS SCHOLARSHIP FUND". I'm assuming the album was a fundraiser for that fund, although I can't find out anything about this particular group of Christian patriots or their fund.

My assumption, though, is that this was a white supremacist group of some type, both because that sort of group pops up in searches for the phrase "Christian Patriots", and because this album came to me in a collection which contains multiple other examples of anti-Semitic, anti-Black and related white supremacy items, such as the album I posted by Wally Butterworth, some time ago.

What you'd be hard pressed to do would be to develop any idea of the political leanings behind this album by actually listening to the tracks. These are straightforward, unimaginative and (to my ears) deathly dull run-throughs of several songs. As mentioned, the songs aren't named on the label, and in a fit of un-professionalism, the producers allowed the next to last song to be recorded at a very low level, and only faded in to full volume after more than half a minute of the tune.

Many of these songs I either don't recognize or can't recall the names of (in the latter camp are several hymns I can hum, but can't put words to). Those I do know include a number of national songs, as well as a few of those hymns. In at least a few cases, calling these songs "Christian" is a stretch (is the U.S. National Anthem in any way a strictly Christian song?), and in at least one other, identifying the song - "Onward Christian Soldiers" - as an American song, is demonstrably untrue.

Because I'm familiar with so few of the songs, and because they are unnamed on the label, I have simply made files of the two sides, without breaking them down into tracks, many of which I'd have to leave unnamed anyway. Besides, the best thing about this album, by far, is being able to see the ridiculous cover

November 09, 2014

I 'm just kicking myself that I didn't come across this record prior to the elections last week, because I think this record could have turned the tide and resulted in something much better than what ended up happening last Tuesday.

This is a record out of Rockford, Illinois, apparently dating from 1968. This date is based on the introduction on side one of the single, by Samuel Shapiro, who introduces himself as the Governor of Illinois, a position he held for just under eight months, nearly all of that term in 1968.

The performer is Pete Quinto, and he certainly is gung-ho in his get-out-the-vote performance, particularly in the last chorus, when both he and the trombone player behind him get quite stirred up and exuberant.

I've also included the flip side, which is lacking the spoken introduction, and which appears to be an instrumental, until that final chorus, when the vocal comes in again.

August 17, 2014

Here’s an album with virtually no redeeming qualities. I say “virtually” because there is a argument to be made for making this sort of thing known, in an historical context, the same way we can use the written and filmed records of prior atrocities to be more aware of similar threats in our midst going forward.

Without that – or even with that “value” taken into consideration – this album is simply repugnant and vile. It came to its original owner, who lived in the deep south, in the early 1960’s, when it was produced. The people behind it called themselves the “Christian Votes and Buyers League”, but most people buying the album would likely have known that this was a front for the Ku Klux Klan.

Essentially, the first side of the record is a twenty minute screed, telling listeners how Kosher rules cause the price of your grocery items to become more expensive, and how to make sure to avoid these products and grocers. Along the way, you’ll hear that Dr. King’s activities were being directed behind the scenes by a Jewish cabal, among other obnoxious lies, the rest of which I’ll let you hear for yourself – although please be aware of just how creepy this entire endeavor is.

The album is narrated by Wally Butterworth, who was at one time a well known radio announcer and quiz show host. According to the brief outline on his Wikipedia page, it would appear that, like so many others, when things didn’t go his way (he lost a lawsuit and his radio platform) he seems to have made a hard turn to the right wing and joined organizations that supported his (and many other people’s) ideas that everything was someone else’s fault, especially the fault of those who didn’t look or think like him.

I’d like to think that this sort of thinking – and the more general group mindset behind it that led to these albums (and much more) would be behind us as a country, but sadly, that’s clearlynotthecase.

Rather than repeat anything else Wally has to say, I'll let him speak for himself:

That folksy “Goodbye, all” at the end, following nearly twenty minutes of hate, is, in context, among the creepiest things on the album.

I’m admittedly not as familiar with the issues that Butterworth gets into on the flip side of this album, but a quick web search indicates that it was about the move towards “one man, one vote”, in that era. Essentially, small towns and rural areas, at least in the south, were getting far more representation in Congress than the number of residents should have allowed. Some congressional districts had literally just hundreds of votes, while those in big cities might have had in the tens of thousands, meaning that the issues of the rural votes had much more pull than all of those other people in the big cities. Around the time of this album, some court decisions had resulted in that imbalanced system having been thrown out.

Now, it seems to me that changing extremely unbalanced representation into something approaching equal representation would be a no-brainer, but Wally Butterworth and his pals seem to see it as an assault on Apple Pie, Mom, Baseball, and the very center of their way of life. At one point, he makes it clear what the concern was: all of those minorities (racial and religious) that live in the cities would suddenly have electoral power that had been denied them, due to the God-given rights of the Rural White Protestants.

Nearly the sum and total of his “solution” seems to be for local jurisdictions to refuse to follow the courts’ decrees, and a cry to his fellow white southern men to rise up and resist the Gum’int’s evil plans to make sure everyone has an equal vote. Sheesh.

February 23, 2014

Check out our new 2014 swag, featuring our new Mighty Goldfinch T-shirt (left), a truckload of new DJ Premiums, and more! All new and current Swag for Life members are eligible to receive our exclusive, limited-edition black Woof-Moo T-shirt, and early pledgers get first dibs on adopting a WFMU DJ or fixture!

Yo La Tengo will be playing cover song requests in exchange for pledges on Wednesday, February 26th (9pm-midnight) on the Evan "Funk" Davies show with co-host Gaylord Fields, and WFMU's Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia close out the Marathon on Sunday March 9th with drunken live band karaoke.

November 24, 2013

Here's a 45, complete with damaged picture sleeve, that I was surprised to find among a batch that I bought online a few years ago. From 1981, it's a group promoting themselves as "The Normal Majority" with two smug, idiotic songs promoting the elimination of feminism. The b-side of this record appeared on this side many years ago, as part of a compilation, but without any of the images, and without the a-side, which is at least as ridiculous as the b-side.

I'm sure this is meant as humor, and maybe you'll find some in it, but to me it falls completely flat. I'd love to think that this was meant as satire (although even then, I'd consider it a failed attempt), but at the same time, I'm fairly sure there's not a chance of that. The address on the back, where you can join their club, indicates that they meant every word.

The one thing that does not surprise me about this record is that it came out of Techny, IL. I grew up two miles east of the tiny hamlet of Techny, which was founded by an extremely conservative religious order, and was still, in 1981, dominated by their facilities. While those facilities certainly contained gorgeous architecture, flora and grounds, they also housed men who, while not married themselves, probably held views about marriage which were quite similar to those on this record. (Techny is no longer a separate community, having been annexed by its neighbor, Northbrook, about a decade after this record was released.)

Earlier this year, WFMU reclaimed the ground floor space of our building* and renovated it on a shoestring. But right now the space is just an empty room with a stage, and we now need to bring it up to code and purchase some basic audio equipment so that we can open our doors to the public and start hosting events.

*(previously, we rented it out to a business that closed shop)

Station Manager Ken explains it all in the video below:

And if that didn't convince you to pledge, perhaps we can entice you with our fantastic new Junk Food T-shirt ($50) or Knit Hat ($100). More swag on view here.

July 14, 2013

This year, I saw two Independence Day-themed exhibits, of
which it would be easy to categorize one as real and one as not, except that,
technically, both are “real.” Or maybe one is just as much a figment of
meaning-projection as the other. I can’t decide.

The first display was at the New York Public Library, which
was showing an original draft of the Declaration of Independence, as
written by Thomas Jefferson, along with one of the original 14 copies of the
proposed Bill of Rights. Both these documents are extremely rare, and the
Library has never exhibited them together before. Because they're so fragile,
they were on display for only three days, July 1–3.

I went to see them after work on
Tuesday, when the library was open late, and stood in line for 45 minutes,
which was totally worth it. It’s hard to write about the experience without
sounding like a Frank Capra film. The crowd was large and diverse, and
noticeably respectful. Even standing in line, everybody was polite and patient,
which is something I don’t recall ever experiencing in an NYC queue before. The
crowd fanned out once we were admitted to the room where the documents were in
three displays: Jefferson's two-sheet (front and back) Declaration, sandwiched
in glass inside two separate vitrines, so you could read all four pages; and
the large, printed Bill of Rights (one of only 14 original copies known to
exist) laid on a slanted backing inside another, much larger display case. Even
though people were allowed to crowd around the displays at will, there was no
bad behavior that I saw: Everyone waited patiently for their turn and looked as
long as they liked.

July 07, 2013

As the last hours of the festive Independence Day long weekend pass us by, here's an appropriate record for the holiday. It's a piece of patriotic drivel written by someone named Michael Quirk, and titled "Have You Thought About Freedom Lately?". Quirk himself recorded the piece at some point, and his version can be found a few places on the internet. But for this release (which the record label oddly shows to have a running time which is over a minute more than its true length), the artist is Eddie Paul:

June 18, 2013

You know how whenever anyone brings up the topic of US sonic
weapons and music torture, someone always says, “What do they do, just turn on
WFMU? Hahahahaha.” No? Maybe you hang out with smarter people than I do. On the
other hand, WFMU has always been a leader in the irritainment industry; some of
my favorite DJs, people I’ve been listening to for decades, do shows I’ve never been able to listen to all the way through.
So I got to wondering—what is on the
playlist when our government wants to break the will of its enemies? (“Enemies”
being defined in the broadest sense, of course, in that the term has included
US citizens minding their own business in their own homes.)

Manuel Noriega vs. Van
Halen: Noriega was Military Governor of Panama from 1984-89, when elections
were held with results he didn’t like. Also, he refused to help Oliver North
with the whole Nicaraguan Contra thing. (Noriega had been working with the CIA
since the 1950s.) Meanwhile, US troops stationed around the Panama Canal were conducting
a series of ludicrously named “operations,” and then a Marine Lieutenant got
killed, and then the US invaded, which was condemned as a flagrant violation of
international law by the UN. Noriega fled to the Vatican embassy in Panama City,
where US troops laid siege in Operation Nifty Package. (I am not kidding about
that name.) They stood around outside playing high-volume rock music,
specifically the Van Halen song “Panama.” A week later, Noriega surrendered.

June 11, 2013

Last night I saw Pussy
Riot: A Punk Prayer, and now I’m convinced that Pussy Riot should be in
jail, which I think was not the filmmakers’ intent.

The video shows three strong feminist women and their
history of activism, culminating in their action in Moscow’s Cathedral of
Christ the Savior. The three who were arrested—Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria
Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich— are not the only members of their political
collective, although you wouldn’t know that from the film. They also are not
“girls,” they are young women in their mid-20s and early 30s, they are wives
and mothers, they are educated and intelligent enough to have devised an
ideological basis for their political protest. Yet since their arrests, they’ve
been portrayed as “girls” who “didn’t realize” that defiling a revered place of
worship would offend anyone, which is complete bullshit: The whole point of the
action was to offend as many people as possible. If people weren’t offended,
they wouldn’t pay attention. Well, they’re paying attention now; they’re paying
attention all over the world.

The women of Pussy Riot must have realized there were likely
consequences for their actions. Just as Edward Snowden was prepared to accept
the loss of his well-paid job, the end of his comfy life, and his possible
extradition to the US to face treason charges, so Pussy Riot should have been
prepared for arrest, trial, and conviction. They say they are feminists: Let
them act like feminists. Their prison sentences are the proof of everything
they’ve said about Russian repression. Let them take the consequence of their
actions like strong feminist women, not disingenuous, apologetic little girls.
In the words of Sammy Davis Jr. “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the
time.”

Be punk, Pussy Riot: Be strong.

UPDATE 6/18: So what I was trying to say was unclear, and that is the fault of my writing. Mostly I was objecting to the documentary's portrayal of "girls," but also there's the rather alarming footage of the three prisoners apologizing and saying they "didn't mean to offend anyone." This is contrary to their otherwise strong statements--contrary, in fact, to their actions. The obvious injustice of two years in prison for their protest is what has called international attention to the very repression they were protesting. I have friends who participated in ACT UP's protest inside St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1989; no one went to prison, but it brought international attention to the AIDS crisis and forced the government to begin dealing with it. I hope Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer will turn out to be as influential. Also, one week on, Edward Snowden looks less like a hero. -B.

May 26, 2013

Well, last time around, I shared a 1960's record brought to us by the right wing zealots over at Key Records, and that got me to thinking about this insane reel of tape I came across years and years ago, featuring the exceptionally obnoxious ramblings of Revilo P. Oliver. Mr. Oliver (who said that being named palindromically was a family tradition), was notable for being a white supremacist and a founding member of both the National Review and of The John Birch Society.

That's enough to peg him as a fringe-dweller right there, but Revilo (and I wish it was pronounced like "Revile" - a feeling which he inspires in me - but I think the accent is on the first syllable) later decided that 1960's American conservatism was just too liberal, and he joined the National Alliance - part of the National Socialist movement - that's right, Neo-Nazis.

The tape features two lengthy lectures, each about an hour long. His main focus seems to be on simply expressing a smug superiority, never really saying too much about what his beliefs are, but rather spewing insults, simplifying and misrepresenting the views of those he considers vermin (i.e. anyone who isn't Western, Caucasian, or who doesn't agree with him), and giving lengthy examples of idiocy on the part of specific individuals, which somehow are meant to indict everyone on the other side of whatever issue he's on about.

There is so much gold here, it's hard to know where to start, but I did find two statements quite telling. The first is when he just sort of states, as fact (and in passing) that the only civilization that matters is the one "that we, the white men of the Western Hemisphere, created". And the second is when he actually says, in reference to what he called the "baneful" effects of slavery, adds that the worst of these baneful effects were on the owners.

Hold on your hats, wigs and keys, ladies and gentlemen, and have a listen to a first class wacko, Dr. Revilo P. Oliver:

Listening to his rants, I find myself wondering - if ol' Revilo were still around today, would he realize that much of the progress that has been made over the last 30 years has been developed, improved and made ubiquitous by the more progressive humans of this era, and that many of the biggest problems on Earth during that period have come from the tyrants, the religiously intolerant and other representatives of the far right?

But then I think of Revilo P. Oliver's political descendants (in the Tea Party and their ilk), and recognize that even they have failed to perceive those developments - so I assume that Oliver wouldn't have noticed, either.

I bet I have close to a dozen Key releases down in my "spoken word" section, in the basement, of which my favorite, and yet also the most depressing, may well be the one Mindwrecker already shared, by Walter Brennan.

But here another prime example, an album featuring a speech by Dan Smoot, publisher of The Smoot Report, in which he extols the virtues of Mr. D. B. Lewis, who was a manufacturer of pet foods. (Smoot, it would seem, was a true believer. Not only was he associated with the Birchers, I learn from Wikipedia that he later went on to oppose George H.W. Bush's candidacy for the U.S. Senate on the grounds that Bush's positions were essentially those of a Democrat!)

It's amazing to hear, in this speech, which took place at some point during the run-up to the 1964 election, the same rhetoric, the same ideas, and in places, close to the same slogans, as those espoused in recent years by members of the tea party and its offshoots. Time, it's sad to say, doesn't do away with all bad ideas - "those who cannot remember the past..." and all that, I guess.

If anyone is interested, there could certainly be more Key Records mayhem to come!

March 17, 2013

As the Christian calendar approaches its holiest days, the time is right for some holier-than-thou listening. And here's a perfect example, a two sided trip to hell from our friends at Creative Sound Recordings of Los Angeles, an awkwardly titled EP-length release "Decision for Destiny: The Region Beyond", narrated by Wayne Pyzer.

This really has to be heard to be believed. Over a variety of B-Movie sound effects, Wayne Pyzer portrays death, I guess, leading a poor soul from her wretched life right into hell, where even when she holds her head in her hands, those hands themselves are in flames. The first voice we hear is actually the dear departed soul herself, then death invites the listener along, and although he asks questions, the woman from the beginning of the record is never heard from again.

Pyzer's performance is perfect, in terms of appealing to those who already agree with him about where the wicked of the world will go (and surely, they get to decide what makes someone wicked). I can't, however, imagine that this record managed to convince anyone who wasn't already on the same page of anything at all. He performs with a smug, obnoxious, know-it-all tone, sounding very much like a fun-house mirror version of Peter Lind Hayes as "Genie, The Magic Record". But instead of enthusiastically and warmly introducing the listener to the wonders of sound and imagination (as did Hayes), Pyzer sounds like he's looking down his nose at something icky on his shoe, while introducing the listener to the concept of being too late to repent.

In a way, this record reminded me of right wing radio and television - an echo chamber for the converted. I have a hard time believing that anyone who wasn't with him before the record started was converted into any new way of thinking once it was over. It is, however, a quite entertaining little play, especially if one listens to it as if it were meant as satire, and will be the source of many a sound clip for those who like to play with sounds.

This is the second and final week of WFMU's fundraising Marathon and we are still less than halfway to our goal, which must be met by Sunday, March 17th! Make a pledge now!

Special highlights this week:

TONIGHT - Tuesday, March 12 (9pm-mid)

A.C. Newman and John Hodgman join Tom Scharpling on the Best Show on WFMU for 3 hours of mirth, music, and mayhem! Tune in to win killer prizes, and watch it all go down on our live video feed at wfmu.org. Pledge to the Best Show using this link.

Thursday, March 14 (9am-noon)

Yo La Tengo play your cover song requests in exchange for pledges of $100 or more on Hello Children with Faye and co-host Gaylord Fields! Pledge to the Yo La Tengo request-a-thon NOW fromthis page, or tune in to pledge live.

March 04, 2013

Congressional Republican economy terrorists have been
holding the country hostage for a while now—Sequester! Fiscal Cliff! Debt
Ceiling! Meet All Our Crazypants Demands or We’ll Blame Obama!—and people who
don’t enjoy negotiating with terrorists have been looking for a way around
dealing with them. How can we keep paying our bills if there’s no money in the
bank? Well, one obvious way would be to print some more money.

Technically, the Government can’t print more money, but the Federal Reserve can. (They are not the same thing
and if you don’t know this, that is because you are not a nutbucket conspiracy
theorist like me. Most normal people do not know how the Fed works.) BUT: Back
in 2011, a Constitutional law professor at Yale started talking about an idea
to take advantage of the one way in which the Government can mint more money: commemorative coins! The Secretary of the
Treasury is allowed (31 USC § 5112!) to strike platinum
coins in any denomination. So all the Secretary of the Treasury has to do is to
mint two one-trillion-dollar platinum coins, deposit them with the Federal
Reserve, and hey presto! It’s all good. (And go to hell, Repubican
economy terrorists.)

The trillion-dollar-coin idea started being talked up again
a couple months ago, as the Sequester approached, and it was even endorsed by
some Celebrity Economists, but in the end Jacob Lew was confirmed as the new
Secretary of the Treasury and even if he tried to issue The Coin, no one can
read his handwriting and the Treasury would probably just issue a couple of
platinum Slinkys instead.

Still, I do believe we could apply the trillion-dollar-coin principle
to raising money to support WFMU.
When Former Cohost Jay and I decided to
produce our own Thunk Tank currency (the Bieb, the official currency of
Iceland!) we discovered that it is illegal for anyone but the Government to
issue specie (coins), but anyone can issue paper money. (So we did.)
Why should we continue with the annual Marathon and the Record Fair and the
Secret Off-Air October fundraiser and the Superstorm Sandy Wrecked the Station
Special Appeal and Station Manager Ken in a Lawn Chair Attached to Weather Balloons, going back to the Listeners for their support again and again, just because
we’re a Listener-Supported station? (And God bless the Listeners, they have been
fantastic!)

All Station Manager Ken has to do is issue a 1-milion Bieb
note (which trades at a rate of 1 Bieb to 1 US dollar), deposit the note in the
WFMU bank account, and then pay all our bills! (Or just deposit 10,000 100-Bieb
notes, because I think there are plenty of them lying around the station from Thunk
Tank’s overproduced Marathon premiums.) Assuming the bank that has the WFMU
bank account will accept it for deposit, which maybe they will not.

Alas, the one- trillion-dollar coin is not to be. The main
problem seems to have been that it would have called attention to the fact that
our entire economy is based on the fiction of fiat currency and debt. So I will
never be able to add the Biden Commemorative $1 trillion dubloon to my
collection, and I also still have never got a Guam quarter, either, so what’s
up with that? You can still use your Federal Reserve-issued currency to support WFMU, though, so go to wfmu.org and make your pledge now.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and thanks for supporting WFMU.

All new and current Swag for Life members are eligible to receive our new messenger bag, and early pledgers get first dibs on adopting a WFMU DJ or fixture!

Yo La Tengo will be playing cover song requests in exchange for pledges on Thursday, March 14th (9am-noon) on Hello Children with Faye and co-host Gaylord Fields, and WFMU's Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia
close out the Marathon on Sunday March 17th with drunken live band
karaoke.